Displaced Childhoods: Oral History and Traumatic Experiences

Southampton Solent University in association with Modern Languages, University of Southampton

From: 13th July 2012
To: 14th July 2012

This multidisciplinary conference will showcase how oral history is increasingly being used to explore the impact of traumatic events such as war, evacuation, conflict and growing up in care has on children and their adult selves. We have an exciting line up of speakers from both the UK and overseas, presenting papers on a range of topics around displaced childhoods, as well as on methodological and ethical issues. The conference will be of interest to all those working in the field of oral history.

Key themes of the conference include:

Internal migration and the global movement of children from Spain, India, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

The ‘Forgotten Children’ forcibly migrated to Australia

Childhood experience of civil disasters

The effects of growing up in care and long-term hospitalisation

The development of therapeutic environments for children and young people with emotional, social and behavioural disorders.

Keynote Speakers:

Dr Joanna Sassoon , project manager of the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project at the National Library of Australia; and

Professor Lynn Abrams, author of The Orphan Country: Children of Scotland’s Broken Homes and Oral History Theory

We are pleased to be holding the conference at Southampton Solent University as this year the city commemorates the 75th anniversary of the little known story of Los Niños, the children evacuated to the UK during the Spanish Civil War. An oral history project on Los Niños will be discussed at the conference.